Turn On The Heat

Dancing Tambourine At the beginning of the 20th century, New York-born composer William C. Polla (1876-1939) published piano rags and salon music under the name W.C. Powell and ran a Chicago-based publishing house under his own name. He also headed the W.C. Polla Orchestra, which recorded a few sides for Columbia in the mid-1920s. Although his classic Dancing Tambourine is one of the most delightful piano novelties ever published, it represents a revolutionary departure from the genre. By the late 1920s, the evolved canon stated that the piano novelty should be written in the key of D major and have a melody that is studded with triplets and voiced in intervals of fourths. Polla bowed to tradition by inserting a triplet in the third measure of the first phrase of the piece, but in other respects, he broke all the rules. The result is an iconoclastic masterpiece that, when new, attracted such pianistic talents as Pauline Alpert (Victor 21251 and Duo-Art piano roll 713430) and Rube Bloom (Okeh 40901). Continued entyhusi9asm for the piece was ensured with it's publication as a song with words by Phil Ponce. It was also recorded in orchestral transcription by such dance bands as Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra (Victor 20972) and Sam Lanin and his Famous Players (Okeh 40874). Moonlight on the Ganges Since the classical era, Westerners have been captivated by the mysterious allure of the Orient. The orientalizing era of Classical Greece was on manifestation of this attraction; the oriental fox trot of the early twentieth century is another. Moonlight on the Ganges was not the first and certainly not the last song of this genre, but it certainly was the most successful example of it's kind in 1926. Deep Night Deep Night reveals the more melancholy, pensive, and passionate side of the popular music of the 1920s. The song's lyricist was none other than popular band leader Rudy Valle, who featured the song on his Fleishmann's Yeast NBC Radio Show in 1929 and recorded it for Victor (21868) as well. The composer, Charlie Henderson (1907-1970), was a Harvard graduate who studied composition with Walter Piston. He had a successful career as a pianist, arranger, composer, and musical director for radio, film, stage, and television. Up in the Clouds Thinking of You Upon it's opening on 10 October 1927 at the 44th Street Theater, Broadway was entranced with the 5 O'Clock Girl, starring Oscar Shaw and Mary Eaton. Running for 280 performances, it was by all measurements a smash hit. The book was written by Guy Bolton and Fred Thompson. The song writing team of Bert Kalmar (1884-1947) and Harry Ruby (1895-1974) filled the score with tuneful, up-lifting, and subtly gershwinesque songs, of which Up in the Clouds is a representative example. Thinking of You was the great ballad number from the show. Flapperette Few novelty piano pieces ever matched Flapperette for sweetness and charm. The classic canons of the form are observed but without descending to mere formula. Native New Yorker Jesse Greer (1896-1970) was largely known as a composer of popular songs, but he also wrote songs for such Broadway productions as Earl Carroll's Vanities (the 1926 and 1928 editions), Say When!, and Lovely Lady. In the late 1920s, Greer was especially active writing songs hits for such MGM talking pictures as the Hollywood Revue of 1929 and Marianne (1929). Meditation Lee Sims (1898-1966) was a gifted pianist, arranger, and composer whose heyday was the 1920s. He also composed the scores to a number of Hollywood movies such as Dinner at the Ritz (new World, 1927), starring David Niven. Though strictly a solo piano composition, Meditation contains the stylistic innovations that distinguished the interpretive approach Sims took to popular songs. Sims employed a successful and faultlessly executed juxtaposition of opposites, e.g., slow and fast; sweet and hot; rubato and a tempo, etc. Mediation also reveals Sims' masterful handling of advanced chord structures and rhythmic patterns, influenced by the music of Debussy, ravel, and Stravinsky. Z